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Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Another One Bites the Dust

Maybe you saw that Terry Murray was fired as coach of the Los Angeles Kings yesterday. Maybe you also saw that Murray was 13-12-4 this season and only two points out of a playoff spot. Could you imagine a coach with that record ever getting fired in Columbus? Neither can I.

On some level, Terry Murray must be a bad coach.
Fans in Columbus have yet to experience that level.

Murray was 499-383-89-41 as a coach in over 1000 career NHL games. Impressive, yes. But not good enough for LA. Moreover, the dude needs just one more win to hit 500, but the heartless cads in the LA front office couldn't wait to show him the door and tell him not to let it hit him where the good Lord split him. If he would have posted that record in Columbus we would be buying $1 cotton candy from vendors on Murray Street after the games.

Meanwhile, we seem to be stuck here in Columbus with a guy that has coached us to six regulation wins in his last 51 games. I know, I know. There was Wiz's suspension, and injuries, blah, blah, blah. The problem is, when you coach a winner or at least a team that thinks of itself as a winner, you don't get to use those things as excuses. In fact, you might get fired for even trying to make excuses. When you coach for a winner, those things don't matter. Winning matters. And apparently, sometimes that isn't even enough.

Some teams raise the bar on themselves, like the Kings did yesterday. Other teams, like the Jackets, seem content to be just sitting at the bar. Try to understand how the Kings could fire a coach that is 13-12-4 so far this year and you will begin to understand how far the Jackets are from being a winner.

Now Murray and Carlyle are out there, unemployed. Both are better coaches than anyone we've had here, save Hitch; and, desperate as they might be to return to behind the bench in the NHL, how likely is it that either would accept a call from our GM? This is a truly sad state of affairs!

Any decent organization (and by that I mean any of the other 29 teams in the league) would have sacked Arniel MONTHS ago. But hey, what do you expect from a "country club" atmosphere? I'm sure the players are learning that if a less-than-mediocre coach can last this long, then so too can below-average players!

Arniel has proven that he is not an NHL coach. Just look at some of his player selections (A. Giroux? Bass? Byers? Johnson? What are these guys doing out of the AHL?) and his lines. Sometimes, it seems he picks his lines by throwing darts at a board. Then there's all the excuses he's made. But most telling, for me, was a game a couple of weeks ago. During a time out, who was rallying the Jackets? Was it Arniel? No, it was Todd Richards.Finally, we get a team with enough talent to realistically make a run at the play-offs and what do we get? Another lost season and, at the least, 95% of the blame can be laid on Scott Arniel's shoulders.